


air and light and time and space

by giucorreias



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Contentment, I'm just giving these two a break, M/M, somewhat poetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 18:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giucorreias/pseuds/giucorreias
Summary: it's not that tony's never loved anyone quite this muchthough it is, a little





	air and light and time and space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleepingnerd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingnerd/gifts).



> this is a gift for the wonderful sleepingnerd, that was sadly left without a gift on our gift exchange. i hope you like this, though! it's small, but it was a labor of love.
> 
> this is a relationship study slash me giving these two babes a well-deserved happy ending (endgame is coming and it will DESTROY ME). what i had in mind is literally all the messes have happened and then the messes ended and they're now both alive and a little broken but they found each other and they're healing together. yes. whatever happens in the movie that is different from that doesn't matter.

This is easy like nothing else is easy. This is easy like typing the numbers on a calculator and applying the resulting numbers into his equation. This is easy like prying out Dumm-e’s main circuit and blowing out the dust. This is easy— _ easier _ than breathing deeply and filling up his lungs with much needed oxygen. 

Tony’s never had much easy in his life.

To be fair, he likes a challenge, he likes spending hours trying to solve math theorems and technological problems—but that’s something else. Technology is easy. Mathematics is easy. Life is… not. His relationship with his father was a clusterfuck of emotional trauma and unsaid feelings. He realizes, on the height of his adult life, after decades of feeling like a disappointment, that his father was just a human being, that he just had his own problems, his own traumas. That he had lost people he cared about, and was trying to get them back.

Then Howard had died, and Tony was left alone. Then Tony was betrayed by Obie. Then there was Afghanistan and then there was Iron Man. The clusterfucks kept accumulating one on top of the other, like an avalanche, like a wave, and he was atlas holding the weight of the world and failing under it,  _ falling _ under it.

He survived all of his worst days. He lived through all of his near-death experiences. After losing people, and having his heart broken, and being betrayed he’s still  _ here _ . Sitting here. Under the great expanse of blue sky, no clouds, holding an ice cold Margarita, touching  _ him _ everywhere. Shoulders, hips, legs, toes—Bucky’s skin is warm under his skin, his cheeks red under the sun. His long-ish hair is tied up in a ponytail and his eyes are closed, his lips curled up into a satisfied half-smile.

Sitting here and watching the waves break against the sand, the foam slither up and down in rhythmic motions as the world happens around the two of them; nothing could be easier. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

He is, as he has never been, content.

  
  
  


Bucky was a surprise. Tony had never got on well with Captain America—with Steve—, so he had been expecting… anger. Hostility. Animosity. Awkwardness. Blame.

Instead, he found forgiveness in the curve of Bucky’s smile and comfort in the warmth of his breath. He found happiness in the pitch of his (rare) laughter, love in the lilting of his voice, serenity in the cradle of his body wrapped against his after a bad nightmare, in the way he’d splay his fingers on his chest right above his heartbeat and drum along the rhythm until they fell asleep.

Bucky is completely different from Steve. Tony understands, now, how Steve works and what makes him tick. He understands, now, why Steve did what he did, why he had to do it, why things happened the way they happened. It’s not because he loves Bucky. It’s not that he catches himself thinking he might have done the same, if put in the same situation. It’s not that Bucky is such an integral part of his existing in peace that this world would lose half of its appeal if he died, if he stopped existing, if he was in danger.

Though it is, a little.

Bucky is rock solid when everything else is sand slipping through his grasp. Bucky is the stop sign slowing down the world that moves way too fast. Bucky is pleasure at the little things—languidly stretching under the morning sun, whistling along the summer birds, sharing the last candy in the packet, watching your favorite movie for the thousandth time.

Tony doesn’t know how he’d live without Bucky. He wouldn’t. He won’t.

  
  
  


Sometimes he feels like they’re a result of fate. Like everything that happened from the moment they were born to the moment they’re at, now, turned them into what they are—absolutely  _ perfect _ to each other.

They’re not best friends. Tony’s best friend is and will always be Rhodey, and while Tony is still not in the best of terms with Steve, he has no desire to compete with him for the best friend position. He knows that there are parts of Bucky he won’t ever understand and Steve will, but that’s ok. That’s  _ ok _ .

There are parts of Bucky that Steve’s righteousness will never be able understand. And whatever it is, even if he can’t understand, Tony will always be there for Bucky. On the bad days and on the good days and on those days in between, when the sun rises and the sun sets and nothing happens beyond the passing of hours, one after the other.

Is it monotony if he’s holding Bucky’s hand and counting the seconds along the rhythm of his breathing? Is it boredom if he’s mumbling code into the soft skin of Bucky’s neck as they’re both in bed at three in the afternoon? Is it grey if it glints under the sunlight streaming through the windows of his bedroom?

Maybe those are good days, too. The ones in between. The ones when they can’t exactly function like normal human beings, but having each other helps. The ones they don’t quite leave bed. The ones silence sits heavily on their throats, but they don’t have to speak because Tony understands Bucky’s looks like he understands no one else’s.

  
  
  


It’s not that Tony has never loved anyone quite this much (though it is, a little).

It’s that sometimes love isn’t enough.

Sometimes you need to be able to display your jagged edges with the certainty that the other person can navigate around them without getting cut. Without bleeding. Without making them sharper. Love doesn’t give you special powers, and Love doesn’t make sharp edges softer, and Love doesn’t make a person’s past disappear, even if Love helps, a little.

Bucky and Tony’s relationship has stronger foundations than Love.

And finding that, at this point in his life, and after everything that has happened, is a miracle Tony isn’t quite sure he deserves but isn’t willing to let go of. Ever.

  
  
  


They’re perfect together. They’re good together. They’re  **_happy_ ** together.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @ giucorreias.


End file.
